'Munich city council shields Limux against Mayor'

The council of the German city of Munich continues to support the city's open source IT strategy, and opposes the newly elected mayor and a deputy mayor, reports Heise, a German IT news site. CSU party members of the deputy mayor shrug off his negative comments as "an irrelevant individual opinion".

According to Heise, the city council will not abandon Munich's open source IT strategy. "We have no new position on this matter", it quotes SPD-spokesperson Bettina Messinger as saying. Earlier this month, Munich's new mayor, Dieter Reiter, also SPD, suggested he wants to change tack.

The mayor was quoted by Stadtbild' - the internal newsletter of the city administration, as saying that open source is running behind the proprietary IT vendor's solutions.

"There always has been criticism", Councillor Messinger acknowledged. "But in the field of IT, that is nothing special." She denied that the city's new coalition is preparing a return to the ubiquitous proprietary system.

Increase support

On Friday, Heise also quotes CSU council member and IT professional Otto Seidl as saying he is an advocate of Limux. Getting rid of IT vendor lock-in was an important and correct thing to do, even if there are a higher number of software solutions available for the proprietary system. He dismissed the comments by CSU deputy mayor Josef Schmid, saying that the open source project is botched, as 'an irrelevant opinion of a lawyer".

The IT strategy is also defended by the chairperson for the city's Green Party, Florian Roth. He wants to shore up the IT department so it can address usability complaints. He told Heise that a switch back to the proprietary systems would be dimwitted, now that the migration has been completed, saving the city over ten million euro otherwise spent on proprietary licences.

Heise reports that the council will discuss the critique this week in a committee meeting. The IT strategy itself is not on the council's agenda.